You get what you pay for

Recall that Rutgers did a study that showed New Jersey was hurt economically with so many people leaving the state. The Corzine administration then used tax money to buy a study from an outfit run by a former state employee and economic adviser to Gov. Florio that hinted it was just the riffraff leaving and they would be sorry about the place they wound up. More crime, poor schools, stuff like that. Not as bad as the pundits (that’s me and the other columnists) have been saying, Corzine said. Now comes Mayflower, the people who have been moving families around since 1927. Their survey of moves from January through August this year shows of the moves involving New Jersey, 59.8 percent were leaving the state. That surprises me. The way the Corzine-bought study described the out-bound I figured they left with belongings in the back of their beat up old cars after they took them down off the cinder blocks and drained enough gas out of the lawnmowers to get them moving.

Popular in-bound destinations included Washington, D.C., Kentucky, Vermont, Nevada, South Carolina and North Carolina.

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About Bob Ingle

Bob Ingle is Senior Political Columnist for Gannett New Jersey newspapers and co-author of The New York Times' Best Seller, "The Soprano State: New Jersey's Culture of Corruption" and "Chris Christie: The Inside Story Of His Rise To Power". He has won numerous journalism awards and is often a news analyst on radio and television. Twitter @ bobingle99.

No one in Corzine’s pack of weasels knows how to tell the truth, especially the bald weasel himself. In spite of that, they keep their jobs and get re-elected, because their support base consists of dim-witted, self-absorbed toadies and parasites.

With the screwballs in Washington about to piss away over one trillion dollars in bailouts and “drunken-sailor” spending appropriations, our dollar isn’t going to be worth a dime by the end of the decade. It should be interesting to watch the collapse.

The total collapse of the global financial system is one thing — everyone at Davos in January saw that coming. But the shrinkage of the Goldman Sachs Group bonus pool is another. Whatever else the Treasury achieves it must know that if the employees of Goldman suffer any sort of pay cut, it will be judged to have failed. And our country may never recover. Last year Goldman paid its employees $20 billion, 44 percent of the firm’s revenue. Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein took home $68.5 million, and many otherwise ordinary human beings took home $10 million or more.

This inspired young people everywhere, many of whom may have privately wondered whether it was still worth their time to become investment bankers. Therein lies the problem: If they see Goldman’s salaries and bonuses declining, who among the best and the brightest will be induced to join Goldman?

To its credit the government has thus far done pretty much all it can to prevent any suffering inside the firm. Its extreme sensitivity to Goldman’s pain is the only way to explain its actions thus far. But its approach has been crude; it has been using a sledgehammer to do a scalpel’s job.

For instance, by banning the short-selling of shares in the amazing number of Wall Street-related companies that America apparently can not live without (Moody’s Corp.?), it may have prevented Goldman from being driven out of business. Certainly, the ban caused Goldman’s share price to fall less than it otherwise would have.

But this wise policy ignores the fact that Goldman Sachs, perhaps more than any other financial firm, makes a lot of money from the short-selling of Wall Street-related stocks — by enabling its hedge-fund clients to do it.

Goldman needs any revenue it can get its hands on right now. A wiser policy would have been to disallow the short-selling of Goldman’s shares alone, and let the other 925 financial-related companies collapse. If other firms were allowed to suffer a bit more, Goldman would consume their juiciest bits too, and become stronger for it. Perhaps its share price might cease to fall. This points to what amounts to a character flaw inside the Securities and Exchange Commission: fear of the bold stroke.

Clearly it wasn’t enough to ban the short sale of Goldman’s shares, as those shares resumed their downhill journey. What’s needed is a broader ban on pessimism of any sort. Worrisome newspaper articles, whispered conversations, mildly skeptical thoughts, anything that might adversely affect Goldman’s share price: all these, too, must be outlawed. Lately, for instance, I have heard several hedge-fund managers gossiping about Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson.

One of the things they say is that, in leaving Goldman for government service, Paulson made the greatest trade of his life. Not only was he required to sell his half-billion dollars in Goldman stock near the high, but also, as Treasury Secretary, he was exempt from capital-gains taxes. By getting out of Goldman while the getting was good, the guy may have doubled his net worth.

These hedge-fund managers are the very same people who just a few days before were shorting Goldman’s shares and now have nothing better to do with their time than gossip about an esteemed Goldman alumnus. Shame on them. Their idle chit-chat is just the sort of negativity our government needs to ban. But I don’t want to dwell on the government’s failure. As I say, so far they’ve done a pretty good job making sure no one at Goldman Sachs suffers so much as a scratch on his person. I want to look to the future.

The Treasury has proposed using $700 billion of taxpayers’ money to buy the shaky investments created by the likes of Goldman Sachs and sold to customers. This is good, for many obvious reasons, and one less obvious one, too. Obviously, it has slowed the market’s desire to put Goldman out of business. It also offers Goldman a place to stuff its bad investments at prices well above market levels.

But the Treasury plan also creates this wonderful hidden opportunity for Goldman Sachs to make a killing, and thus preserve its bonus pool for a long time to come.

Think of Wall Street as a poker game and Goldman as the smartest player. It’s sad when you think about it this way that so much of the dumb money on Wall Street has been forced out of the game. There’s no one left to play with. Just as Goldman was about to rake in its winnings and head home, the U.S. government stumbles in, fat and happy and looking for some action. I imagine the best and the brightest inside Goldman are right this moment trying to figure out how it uses the Treasury not only to sell their own crappy assets dear but also to buy other people’s crappy assets cheap.

At any rate, it won’t take long for Goldman Sachs to figure out how to make that $700 billion work for Goldman Sachs. This you can trust them to do. After all, Warren Buffett did. Michael Lewis is a Bloomberg News columnist and the author of “The Blind Side,” “Moneyball” and “Liar’s Poker.”

In 2008, the residents of three statesstand above the rest, paying thehighest state-local tax burdens in thenation: New Jersey, New York andConnecticut. They’re the only threestates where taxpayers give up morethan 11 percent of their income instate-local taxes, compared to anational average of 9.7 percent.WHY ? how can the politicians with a clear conscience keep burying us with these taxes ,what is wrong with these people ?I need answers as to just why do they insist on stealing our only chance to survive ?

Mayflower moved us down here at the end of June, thankfully on the relo expense my Fortune 5 company offered.

I never saw the total, but belive it approached $70K.

Yup, we dimwitted, ex-New Jerseans are down here all sitting on the banks of the Chattahootchie (the ‘Hootch) just ponderin what to do with hayseed in our mouths and Huck Finn rods casting for supper.

Get real, Jersey! I netted $400,000 leaving the state + $36K annual reduction in taxes, tolls and fees (most property.) There is industry, tech, blue skies, friedly people and clean swimming holes as far as the eye can sea.

I was a 5th generation, lifelong New Jersean. I was never so happy to leave and am more enamored of my new home state every day.

It doesn’t matter how many calls they get cause they are going to rob your money anyway. Jerseyans should be used to it by now…..

Interesting both Corzine and Paulson ran Goldman Sachs. Now one robs NJ and the other one is robbing the whole country, and both will get away with it.

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Bob Ingle, Senior Political Columnist for Gannett New Jersey newspapers, on politics in "The Soprano State".

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Bob IngleBob Ingle is Senior Political Columnist for Gannett New Jersey Newspapers and co-author of The New York Times' Best Seller, "The Soprano State: New Jersey's Culture of Corruption." Hear him Fridays at 5 p.m. on www.tommygshow.com radio. twitter.com/bobingle99 E-mail Bob

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